Sunday, June 27, 2010

Where are the mangoes?

Truth No.1. A developed country exports industrialised goods.2. A developing country exports agricultural goods, unprocessed goods3. For some years now, we get only one variety of mango and those are costly4. India is a roaring tiger and fav. destination for investment.......

The list goes on like six men and the elephant- all are partly right and yet in the wrong.

The whole economic theory of the past few decades has been a colossal blunder. The tag of 'developed' based on GDP and technological growth was conferred on the West and every other economy blindly ran after the indicators - rapid industrialisation, birth control, health care, growth of service sector, goods of ostentation, etc. What we achieved is food crisis and scarcity of even so-called free goods of nature like water and pure air.

India has now great variety of beauty products and shoes to choose from. But where are the mangoes? Either someone in faraway lands is enjoying it or the mango orchard has become a mall. The consumer has no option but for a mango bar - processed good - which is available for Rs.10 than the real-'organic' mango which is priced Rs.50 a kilo.

Everything has been tainted or painted with money band - contract farming and hailing processed goods - which means potato chips are better than potato curry - is perhaps responsible for this. Who decides where the raw materials flow into? It is money or markets. The wild scramble for market share and whirring the wheels of production non-stop results in shelves of unused packets of goods - food. India can soon rank proudly with the West in food wasted, while millions go hungry. Who pays for the wastage?

Given the reality of food crisis,water crisis, global warming or cooling - what's in a name - we know all is not well. Let's have a relook at our development models, our standards of measurement.- SK